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© AFP Photo / Bill Pugliano
"You hear about these things happening all over the world, United States, but when it hits this close to home, it just sinks in," says Ann McIntosh. When she woke up this morning, she had no clue what had happened overnight just down the road.

Four people are dead after police say a man shot his wife, two children and then turned the gun on himself.

The Erwin Police Department reports a family of four is dead tonight - a triple homicide, and a suicide.

It happened in a duplex of the Erwin Housing Authority on the 700 block of Carolina Avenue around 2:00 Saturday morning.

The night began just as quiet as it ended. Neighbors say, there was no noise. There was no disruption. But when McIntosh woke up, her neighbors were not there.

She says, "It's just very hard to fathom here because this is just a quiet, quiet place."

McIntosh says the two children living in apartment 124B ran around with all of the other kids in the neighborhood including Matthew Mault.

Mault says his two friends, a boy and girl, were close to his age. He says, "Well you know, we often went to the park across the street and everything."

Chief Regan Tilson says, "It was a wounded person who had called 911 requesting help."

Someone inside the home called police, but when investigators arrived, Chief Tilson says, "Wherein they discovered 4 deceased people."

The Erwin Police Department has handed the investigation over to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Names of the victims and the shooter have not been released.